Is quicken spell still good without matamagic reducer?

[With a box]

I think +4 is too high for use anything useful..
mabey i just grab a lesser rod if it.
P.S 1: How much +5 holy qutarterstaff of life will cost?

P.S 2:why everyone likes assassin guy? I think more than half of people in forum use assassinguy as a portrait, but I can't understand why.

[sideswipe]

hey never underestimate the usefulness of anything, even the cure series of spells has its place. but it is a little situational without a solid plan for it.

honestly, i think metamagic is much more useful for spontaneous casters. or at least spontaneous spells.
if sudden quicken wasn't about 5-6 feats deep i would say its great.

[chaos_redefined]

Yes, Quicken Spell is still worth it.

Imagine any of the following, all doable by 11th level:

You cast Fear at a group of enemies. One of them saves, so you throw a Quickened Ray of Enfeeblement at him. Similarly, a Confusion at a group of enemies followed by a Quickened Suggestion at the guy who saved.

You cast a Quickened Grease before a Web or Solid Fog.

You try your luck with a Dispel Magic, but fail, so you follow up with a Quickened Arcane Turmoil.

You cast a Quickened Magic Missile with your regular Fireball.

You cast a Haste and follow it up with a Quickened Jaws of the Moray. Alternatively, you cast a Quickened Heroics and Fly on your BSF before he tries attacking that flying creature with nice DR. Heroics was for Martial Study(Mountain Hammer), thanks.

Blinding Color Surge into Quickened Silent Image will mess with someone quite well...

And a Quickened True Strike before a ray against anyone with a high touch AC helps a lot.

The thing is, all of this is good at about 12th level onwards. A fourth level slot and a fifth level slot is a big deal at 9th and 10th level, when you can only cast 5th level spells and lower. But when your highest level spell is sixth? The fourth and fifth aren't as big a cost. Quicken shouldn't be your 9th level feat. It should generally be your 12th, and you definitely want it by 15th. (When you can cast 8th level spells, a sixth level slot on quickened Heroics or quickened Web is quite good). Breaking the action economy into two is definitely worth the level increase.

[DarkSonic1337]

It's pretty niche imo. Quicken Ray of Enfeeblement is a nice 6-11 STR penalty with no save before you slap black tentacles on somewhere, and Quicken Ray of Clumsiness can take a chunk out of their reflex save so you can get resilient sphere/sleet storm/bands of steel to ruin someone's day. As you get higher level slots, the stuff you do with quicken gets better.

Buying a lesser metamagic rod of quicken on the other hand is a VERY good investment (as well as a circlet of rapid casting. Quickening 3 2nd level spells is FANTASTIC for 15,000) Most parties will appreciate a quickened Haste while you continue your battlefield control, or a quickened dimension step to help your party move around said battlefield control. Quickened Scorching Ray can let you know if an enemy has high touch AC, spell resistance, or fire resistance before you try other spells on them, quickened ray of exhaustion+ray of exhaustion=no safe just suck, ect.

[heavyfuel]

It's still good, but nowhere near as good as it would be with reducers. Now you you might think that's obvious, and you're right. But there's another point to it as well.


Quickening a 1st level spell is only doable by lv 11 (12 with a feat-tax for spontaneous casters), and it spends your highest level slot. Compare this with swift /immediate action spells and I think we have a clear winner. I'm on my cell right now, but if you can find a list of swift action spells (I think dndtools has one) I'm sure you'll find something to your liking that will save you the feat as well as higher level spell slots.

[JusticeZero]

P.S 2:why everyone likes assassin guy? I think more than half of people in forum use assassinguy as a portrait, but I can't understand why.
Which one is the assassin guy? The stock pictures have always seemed relatively balanced in their level of use to me. I suppose there might be some pictures that don't get much use.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Well as you said, there are also rods. Even so, yes. It is totally worth it at higher levels. The higher you go, the less painful the +4 seems, since many 1st and 2nd level spells remain useful late into the game, especially buffs. Plus you can then quicken higher level spells, too. You definitely wouldn't need it before level 12, you might even put it off till 15, but you definitely want it by then.

Aside from buffs, you can use some offensive spells with it, mainly ones without saves so the low level doesn't hurt it. Quickened web followed by black tentacles is a nice combo to lock someone down. Later on, quickened dimensional anchor + black tentacles. Or use quickened sculpted grease (in this case, the reflex save is an after-thought; you're trying to swiftly stack up spells that reduce the enemy's speed so he can't leave the mire of suck).

And really, the buffs... Haste, Polymorph, Fly, etc... It's nice to get one of those off and still do something offensively in a turn.

It's a high level feat, despite the lack of pre-reqs, and serves its purposes well. At high levels, you have waaaaaay more spell slots (even just the upper half of spell levels) than you'll need in most adventuring days. So being able to call down twice as many per turn is amazing.

[Fax Celestis]

Quicken's intrinsic advantage stems primarily from two things:

First, it basically doubles the actions you get in a round. This is obviously powerful.

Secondly, since noncasters have little, if anything, to do with their swift actions, quicken effectively gives you a whole new action type to use that noncasters don't ever get to see. It's one of the big reasons for the caster/noncaster disparity. Certainly not the only reason, but it's big: simply by virtue of being a spellcaster, you basically gain a completely new action type that only you can use.

[Hecuba]

Assuming you're not running up against spells/day, Quicken Spell is at least as useful as a cohort 8 levels lower than you. Perhaps more so, since such a cohort is easy to kill.

[DeAnno]

Quickened True Strike is probably better than a lot of other 5th level spells, from either a Gish or Blaster DPS standpoint. In either type of build I would probably try to work it in as an option in some way if it was practical.

[heavyfuel]

P.S 2:why everyone likes assassin guy? I think more than half of people in forum use assassinguy as a portrait, but I can't understand why.

It's because you're on mobile. If a person has never chosen an in-site avatar, the mobile version of the site (which doesn't show custom avatars) defaults them to assassinguy because he's alphabetically the first one.